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Professional Computer Science B.S. Degree – Policies

Working Ahead

The current policy is to provide learning materials typically one week in advance or in some cases, in advance of the weekend prior to that one week. Check with your class instructor for specifics or to cover instances where an exception may be granted.

Code Sharing Policy

Unrestricted code sharing outside of the class to publicly accessible external sites is not useful to yours or future students' learning of this material and in fact, constitutes a violation of Academic Dishonesty as per the Oregon State Student Conduct Code. Additionally, it is never allowed on examinations, assignments or projects unless explicitly allowed by the instructor and in those cases, specificity of what kind and how much code sharing can occur will follow. If you ever have questions about posting code outside of the confines of your class and its associated collaboration tools, email your instructor privately to ask for guidance.

Limited code sharing amongst your classmates is useful and can occur where it serves to spark discussion and foster learning but it is subject to the following constraints:

1. Lesser option - Code sharing is a means of learning from your peers. It is most effective when you've already attempted the problem yourself and examined external resources first.

2. Snippets - Share a minimal, compiling program in which the problem is contained or that clarifies your point - its not OK to share the entire codebase.

3. Explain - In the case where you are the recipient of shared code, you must be able to explain its operation.

4. Reference - When using shared code, you must reference the source.

Even if these constraints are met, if an instructor believes that code has been shared inappropriately, he/she reserves the right to question, edit or remove any code that he/she finds in the class public domain or as part of your submitted assignment, project or examination and take action accordingly. Again, if you have questions about sharing large code segments or sharing beyond your classmates, please contact the instructor first.